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> Spiral galaxy M101 in Ursa Major
Spiral galaxy M101 in Ursa Major
author: Nasa/Esa/Novapix
reference: a-gax54-57005
Image Size 300 DPI: 134 * 104 cm
Spiral galaxy M101 is a beautiful, large, face-on spiral galaxy located about 27 million light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major. This galaxy's portrait is actually composed of 51 individual Hubble exposures, in addition to elements from images from ground-based photos. The giant spiral disk of stars, dust, and gas is 170,000 light-years across or nearly twice the diameter of our galaxy, the Milky Way. M101 is estimated to contain at least one trillion stars. Approximately 100 billion of these stars could be like our Sun in terms of temperature and lifetime. The galaxy's spiral arms are sprinkled with large regions of star-forming nebulae. These nebulae are areas of intense star formation within giant molecular hydrogen clouds. Brilliant young clusters of hot, blue, newborn stars trace out the spiral arms. The disk of M101 is so thin that Hubble easily sees many more distant galaxies lying behind the galaxy.
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